Earliest Stalking Rifle Info Req

TikkaFan

Well-Known Member
Hi

I`m doing a bit of research and looking for info on the earliest rifles used for stalking in the UK , I guess muzzle loaders were the first , any info, suggestions and links appreciated .

Cheers
 
Hi

I`m doing a bit of research and looking for info on the earliest rifles used for stalking in the UK , I guess muzzle loaders were the first , any info, suggestions and links appreciated .

Cheers
Specifically rifles or just firearms in general?

i seem to remember when reading 'children of the new forest' they mentioned stalking deer with matchlock muskets during the 1600's
 
Hi

I`m doing a bit of research and looking for info on the earliest rifles used for stalking in the UK , I guess muzzle loaders were the first , any info, suggestions and links appreciated .

Cheers

Sounds like fascinating research!

I'm sure you'll get lots of responses, but try to get hold of a copy of "Hunting & Stalking Deer in Britain Through the Ages", by G Kenneth Whitehead. A great historical reference for all things deer-related and where most of the information below can be sourced.

I presume you are talking deer stalking here, rather than hunting? If so, it may pay to focus on Scotland, rather than England, since it is generally accepted that modern deer stalking as we know it originated through Queen Victoria's fascination with all things Scottish.

In terms of the law, the 1685 Act in Scotland finally permitted the use of "fowling pieces" for hunting, prior to which they had largely been prohibited. For example the Act of 1551 specifically prohibited the use of firearms in hunting, and any person found using one for killing game would lose his life and "forfeit his moveable goods"!

So maybe a start would be to look at the firearms of the 17th and early 18th Century, though doubtless they were also being used before it became strictly legal to do so. So rifled flintlocks, for example, of the type seen is the works of artists such as Gainsborough with his portrait of Mr & Mrs Robert Andrews (Mr and Mrs Andrews - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), even if the sitters here were in Suffolk and not Scotland!
 
Thanks chaps , what I`m looking (I should have explained better )is info on the earliest rifles and ammo specifically built for deer hunting/stalking in the UK , not military firearms used for hunting.
Cheers
 
Thanks chaps , what I`m looking (I should have explained better )is info on the earliest rifles and ammo specifically built for deer hunting/stalking in the UK , not military firearms used for hunting.
Cheers

If you look at the early flintlocks, they were actually built for sporting purposes rather than military. So although the British Army was using muskets like the Brown Bess from the early 1700's, they didn't trial rifles until the Ferguson in the late 1770's and the first widespread adoption of the rifle didn't come until the Baker rifle from 1800 onwards.

So the early flintlock rifles would still be the place to look.

If you're thinking more about "classic" deer stalking, then I'm afraid it's probably back to Queen Victoria and the early to mid 19th century, with rifles such as the one seen in "Highland Gillie and his Pony" by William Allan (Highland Gillie and His Pony - Sir William Allan - The Athenaeum). For example Prince Albert gave a Royal Warrant of Appointment as Gun and Rifle Makers to Westley Richards on July 1st 1840. Westley Richards were building rifles from 1830 onwards (http://www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/nra/lists/GB-800819-Westley.htm).
 
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Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to keep them operational in Scottish conditions? We complain about our scopes fogging up!
 
Can you imagine how difficult it must have been to keep them operational in Scottish conditions? We complain about our scopes fogging up!

It must have been horrendous :scared:

But in those days it was the difference between having some meat on the table and going without, so I guess they were pretty diligent about making sure when a shot presented itself they could take it!
 
If you look at the early flintlocks, they were actually built for sporting purposes rather than military. So although the British Army was using muskets like the Brown Bess from the early 1700's, they didn't trial rifles until the Ferguson in the late 1770's and the first widespread adoption of the rifle didn't come until the Baker rifle from 1800 onwards.

So the early flintlock rifles would still be the place to look.
I am very interested in what firearms the Scots had then, and how common they were, what they cost, etc.

The British Army preferred muskets because they were less expensive to make and faster to reload. Major Ferguson took his own breechloading flintlock to America as a commander of British troops there, and was a very good shot with it. He was killed at the battle of King' Mountain, South Carolina, during an attack by a mix of local militia and Overmountain Men from Tennessee and North Carolina, who had marched all night from the Cowpens, about forty miles away, for a surprise dawn attack. These men were armed with "Pennsylvania long rifles" made by German and Swiss gunsmiths. Ferguson was hit by perhaps as many as twenty shots of .45 and .32 caliber ball from 100 to 150 yards, before he could fall to the ground. But it would not be until the 1840s that the U.S. state militias would start using rifles ( there was no standing army until 1861, no national guard until 1912).

The reason I go into this is that almost all the American combatants that day were Scots who had migrated from Pennsylvania to Virginia and the Carolinas prior to 1760, or recent Ulster Scots come by ship to Charleston for free land after the treaty with the Indians in 1769. Some of the muskets brought from Scotland have barrels or actions from Germany, and some are marked from Dundee.

A local library has a collection of rare books, including hunting books from England. One of them was published during the reign of Elizabeth I, and shows her in a woodblock cut, riding a horse through the woods with a firearm of some sort, and another of her using bow and arrow. A local gunshop here has an over-under British flintlock smoothbore for sale, in .58 caliber, suitable for ball or shot. I will go take a photo of it. A local museum has local firearms from colonists, from the 1620s onward, including matchlocks, then flintlock rifles beginning in the mid-1770s.
 
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